A poetic drama (One Scene)

( Egypt’s parliamentary farce)

(The spokesperson on the presidium strikes the table with a wooden hammer and asks for order. Participants become quiet.
Raise your hands and reflect your views on today’s point of argument— The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD ) on Blue Nile. Various people representatives raise hands,
The spokesman says let us start with Mr. Hydrologist over there.)

Egypt’s globally
Topmost voluminous
Underground
Reserve of water
We could use later.
So via our media outlets
It is better
We dupe
The global community with
Much-touted chatter
“To Egyptians
Demand of water
To cater
Blue Nile is
A life and
Death matter!
As thicker than blood
Is water! ”

Of course,
From the Mediterranean
Or Red Sea
We could extract, desalinate
And use water,
But why should
We talk about that?
We better
Ask on Blue Nile
A farfetched exclusive right.

Though hydropower dam
Has no significant harm
We shall flout it
In a way it runs
Out of charm.
As  the Nobel peace winner
Premier  Abiy Ahmed put it
"Almost all Egyptians
Enjoy the supply of electricity,
While over half of Ethiopians
Are thirsty of such necessity.

Tragically, to date
Using a lamp
Covers most of Ethiopia's map.

For the rational,
It is a source of worry
Innumerable Ethiopian mothers
Still on their backs carry
Backbreaking firewood
So that go to school
Their children could.
What we say
Is if you  are remiss to help
don't stand on our way
While we're flapping wings
From fettering poverty
To break away!"


Also via a conduit
Diverting Blue Nile
Across the Sahara desert
A financial return
Egypt could get
That delights its heart.
The water from
Upstream countries
We do not buy
But paradoxically sell it
We shouldn’t why?

Like Israel
Using drip irrigation
Must not
Draw our attention.
We shall be extravagant
For Blue Nile’s water
Is abundant.
Unchecked lavishly
It must flow!
Pertaining to that
We have to remain adamant.

Also, the
Silt accumulation
In Aswan dam
Could be disastrous
The outcome,
Yet we have
To cry foul
This challenge-averting
GERD must not soon
Generate region-
much-needed power!

Though it is 50 % of the
Annual trans boundary
Water outflow
Other water-generating countries
Are willing to let go
Unwilling anything below,
Kind Ethiopia ventures
Holding only 13% of
The yearly flow to follow,
However, ingratitude
Must feature our attitude.
This may
Provoke a  dismay
But attention
We shall not pay.

(A tumultuous applause shook the parliament. Once more the spokesman asks for order. Then he invites a former diplomat saying “ it is your turn.”)

Once, by famine hit
When Ethiopia   asked
“Help me not why?”,
While others extended help,
Mocking, we did turn
A blind eye.

As our former bent
Whenever Ethiopia
Seeks  grant
From international
Development Institutions
On grounds of
Fighting poverty and drought,
Greasing palms  
We shall bring
Ethiopia’s plans to harness
Blue Nile to naught!
Use we shall
Many a phony diplomat
With a tongue of honey
And a heart of gall.

Tact we do not lack
So cautiously,
Our sanctimonious mask
Our targets
May not hack,
All out
We shall engage in
Self-selling talk!

From all things that fall
In the technical matrices
We shall make a sham politics.

(He sits enjoying a standing ovation. The spokesman invites a representative with a military background.)

We shall blow our
Trumpet in the air
“In lieu of
The reasonable 3 years,
Cooperatively,
From 4 to 6 years
To fill the dam
If Ethiopians dare,
War on it
We shall declare!
Barefacedly claiming
Fifteen to 20 years
Is what is fair!

In such infeasible way
Before it sees the day’s light
GERD will suffer blight.”

(He hiccups and continues)

“With a bellicose bent
To remind ourselves
Deliberately we shall fail
So many times Ethiopia
Chased out every
Egypt’s invading army
Between its legs
Shoveled its tail.
(Ex. Isma'il Pasha/ 1874 –1876
Gundet &Gura March 7–9, 1876)
But why should we care
Arsenal support
Hypocrites, who want to exploit
In the Middle East
Egypt’s political purport,
Will bring to our port.
The current catchphrase
"I can't breathe"
Demonstrates hypocrites'
Justice has no teeth!

We shall
Continue to brag
About GERD’s full actualization
Foot to drag.
I’m afraid
If we strike GERD,
On Aswan dam
Ethiopia will certainly inflict
A similar harm.
Its infantry
Acid-tested hero
Within finger-counted days
Will march into Cairo.

Its top official or
One from its mob
Cold blow up in Egypt a bomb.

We have to understand
As its former PM
Meles put it
“It is not
Its football squad
Ethiopia will deploy
On the terrain rough
When the going
Gets tough!”

We shouldn't worry
We have no history
Of battle front victory.
Poking our nose here and there
(Sudan, Somalia, Yemen,
Libiya, Palestine, Israel)
We shall make political trouble
As we are averse to self
-politics burgeoning dabble.

(He sat after enjoying a heartwarming laughter from the audience. The spokesman himself could not help unzipping his lips and invites a hoary headed historian.)

Subjects of colonization
It is our
Historic right
For the hanging-over
Mentality of predators
To fight
“Gobbling down
All resources
Is our right!”
We shall espouse
Unjust and inequitable deal
“Ethiopia fairly
GERD must not fill!”
We must gamble
Regarding the water division
There has to be a deal
That serves our colonial
Legacy a sign and seal.

There is nothing we hate
Than the following sentiment
Pan Africanists activate.
"We have to get
Behind our back
Days dark!"

(He sits accompanied by an affirmative nods. The spokesman invited Miss Environmentalist "it is your turn." "Thank you for the opportunity,"  she said and  standing she scanned the congregants
before speaking)

In parrying evaporation
GRERD being built in a gorge
Than Aswan Dam
In the desert
Draws better attention.
Though logical,
This we do not wish to hear
So we shall turn a deaf ear
Saying
“Your nuisance
We no longer bear!”

Of course
To avoid siltation
In GERD
Also to ensure
The continuous flow of water
Towards Green development
Ethiopia is making an unprecedented &
Unflagging movement.

Yes , Yes
Green development
Draws rain
Though that is
To our gain
From expressing
Appreciation to
Ethiopia’s timely move
We shall refrain.

From the voice of
Sagacious leaders of
Africa
It is better
To heed a hypocrite
From America;
That could not be a shame
In the political game.

(She takes a seat enjoying a high five. The spokesman invites a parliamentarian who is a member of the Arab league.)

As Sudan poses
A rational gait
Its voice has weight.
Our sugar-coated talk
It may not buy
Hence, the fuel-intoxicated
Gluttonous Arab League
Its voice
Needs to raise high.
White supremacists
Must try hard
To sweet talk Sudan
To our side.
Otherwise
Creating political heat
In to two its people
We have to split
To unseat
Its incumbent president
Popular support that ride.
This  insidious tide
From Sudanese mob
We have to hide!

We have a toy League
That doesn’t ask itself
“ Why
War-fleeing Arabs ,
Shunned by Arabs,
Seek a safe haven
Under Ethiopia’s sky?
Why  of all
In Prophet Mohammed's eyes
Ethiopia stands tall?”
That no one could deny
But we must
Neither wonder  nor ponder
“Why
For own advantage
Arabs-eating-Arabs
That commit  
Political suicide
Could not
Stand by
The reasonable
Ones’ side?”

Creating this and  
That pretext
We shall derail
The all-out task
To bring GERD’s to end,
At long last
To make it
As good as dead.

Why should we care?
If Ethiopia or the region is
Thirsty of hydropower
In so far as
Our conceited
Pride remains
In glory tower.


Moreover if soured
Pushed to the end or angry
Reflect  we must not
Ethiopians could tame
Its this or that tributary.

(When a wealthy merchant raised his hand the spokesman gave him a green light to speak.)

Pampering with money
Fifth columnists cruel
Let us keep on using
In Ethiopia
As runs the adage
Divide and rule,
Along ethnic
And religious lines
To  drive a wedge
So that Ethiopians will not
Come to the same page,
While turmoil in their country
Opts to rage.

We could ignore the fact
Ethiopians soon display
Unity and solidarity
When threatened gets
Nation’s  sovereignty.
In Ethio-Somali war
Ethiopians Karamara’s Victory
Talks loud such history.

I'm afraid
Our  divisive action could
Bring together Ethiopians,
Be it on left or right end,
Their sovereignty to defend.


Robbed of
Their alluvial soil
By a prodigal river
Ethiopia’s  farmers
Undergo a hard toil
If we are asked for that
Compensation to pay
“No!”
We  have  to say.

Note that
Using industrialization
Like Japan
Develop we can
Than irrigating  
A- scorching-sun
-smoldered land
Full of sand.

As the  jealously insane
What should worry Egypt
Must not  be what  it could lose
But  Ethiopia gain.
What I fear
In the diplomatic arena
With GERD Ethiopia
Will come forth
Shifting gear.
When Ethiopians' development
Proceeds apace
Ethiopia could Egypt displace.
So on its development
We  have to pose a roadblock
Or a spoke.
.

(This much  farce is enough for today .Parliament is dismissed says the spokesman.)////////

Tying a string to loan
Coercing a poor country,
Under the yoke of poverty
To squawk and groan,
Also making
The noose tighter, tighter
So that aid it fails to garner,
Allow a hypocrite donor
To flog the receiver
Into a restricted domain
To every donor’s whim
Saying “Amen.”

Tragically, this way receiver’s
Development wishes
And growths’ talk
Will go up in smoke.

In such manner,
With malfunctioned cog,
Receiver turns
The tail of the donor dog,
.
On the other hand,
For donor’s
Geopolitical advantage,
With preferential treatment
The ingratiating donor’s pet,
Pampered, will enjoy
Jealously -strewn
Dream’s fulfillment
To its heart’s content,
While the pushover
Smothered, maltreatments
Has to suffer.

It is such strings
The pushover-made
Ethiopia managed to cut
To generate much-needed
Over 5000 Megawatt.
Megawatt, which commands,
On the back, many a pat.

In so doing
Ethiopia has set an example
Emerging countries
Could realize
Developmental take off
By own dabble
Ramming home donors’
Double standard is
What they can
Do without, while in
Birth cry bout.

Chopping the string
With a self-esteem knife
Ethiopia born GERD to life
Tapping Abay (Blue Nile)—
A confluence of rivers,
Which are rife.

Ethiopia is
Tapping its gigantic river
That originates from its soil
To do away with women’s
Back-breaking toil.

Ethiopia is harnessing
Its prodigal river
To avoid fetching firewood,
Chocked with smoke,
To prepare food.

Ethiopia is subduing
Its God-bestowed river
To outreach with light
Students that study
Late into the night
For want of
A reading lamp
That use smoky lantern
In far-flung corners of
The country’s
Schools’ map.

Ethiopia is
Forcing the river
Yield a hand
So that
Nation’ demand
Electricity—
Mushrooming industries’
Lifeblood—
Soon, will flow
Like an irrigating flood.

Ethiopia is
Taming the wild river
In a bid
Environment-friendly
GERD starts
Generating hydropower soon
To let the region enjoy
The unprecedented boon.

When GERD materializes,
The heinous, covetous
Donors’ pet ,
Which claims to date
The river is
Its exclusive right
Will be
Coerced to stop
Eclipsing the country’s
Affluence hope.

The less privileged
Round the globe
Which are
Under the same fate
Ethiopia’s
Development ******
Could emulate.

Soon Ethiopia will
Join the club
Countries marked
Industrial hub.

You know something?
Arm twisting
Is the mystery of the string!
So go for bootstrapping
Use shoestring.

once you've read enough, or what's
called a respectable "bank account"
in literary terms, you fall back
on poetry, journalism and book reviews...
which springs to mind
a comparison between being a violinist
in an opera, playing a concerto or
being a street vendor, busking out
alternatives to the satanic cartwheels
of rubber tires slicing up a defiant cement road
in a busy hub on the Embankment -
i still want to cry every time i
hear bob marley's redemption song
or the other bob's north country blues,
i don't know, it just happens like period
pains, it's a grudge brimming near
the boiling point of water or the melting point
of iron that's lucky for chefs and for blacksmiths...
i am picking up the pieces of an empire,
the british rubble and a world in chaotic chuckles...
as they said of the roman degeneracy...
that ****** fascination with cuisine...
too any fast-food outlets...
no, but indeed, when you've become satiated with
a personal taste for reading, you
end up reading book reviews...
but i don't understand why a dominic would
read a book by a luke concerning drugs and warfare,
as picked up: 'odin's men rushed forward without
armour, were as mad as dogs or wolves,
bit their shields, and were as strong as bears or
wild oxen...' citing Snorri Sturluson...
the missing clue? magic mushrooms.
also worth mentioning: the 1814 Swedish-Norwegian
war... magic mushrooms aplenty...
in 1945 Soviets in Hungary dubbed the 'rabid dogs'
(indeed no " " enclosure, i trust the man's
descriptive certainty, indeed they were rabid
and dogs and there's no ambiguity to be invoked)
swallowing fly agaric...
american pilots in Afghanistan caffeine+
i.e. amphetamines...
Homer's heroes drunk (why is it that when a poet
is company during a war it becomes iconic
and almost glorious to keep the blood-thirst up?
like that idiocy of warring in the Napoleonic times,
a line of men, walk among canon fire and
stand 20 metres apart and just shoot...
like the post-Napoleonic war strategy of killing
civilians, huh?)... as too the heavy drinking
with king Harold prior to 1066 Hastings...
through to Vietnam, 1971 -
51% of GIs smoked marijuana, 28% took hard
drugs (******) and 31% used psychedelics...
****** was high as ****... a Michael Jackson of his day...
the ****** Eudodal... the luftwaffe on Pervitin
(earliest patent for crystal ****) and too
the Panzer men, e.g. a Gerd Schmücle.
sober citation at the end of the review
quoting a soviet surgeon:
                        'women and wine
                         are all very fine,
                         but a real man needs more:
                         the sweet taste of war.'
sometimes i'm in that aspect of things, almost gladly
i'd take up a trunk of wood and bash about
the field - but i realised poetry is a great war
you fight solo, and there's no brotherhood idealism,
solo, solo, all the way through...
but this still doesn't explain why a boy would
read blue material, as above mentioned,
and a girl would read pink material...
a jessica reading sounds and sweet airs:
                                        the forgotten women of
              classical music...
gentrification in the making... why wouldn't a boy
read pink material? too much of a crane driver or
a lorry nomad in him, to simply sit down
and hear a diva with 'oh, what ****!'
citing the Duke of Mantua's envoy that was Barbara
Strozzi play the clarinet?
you know why i'm cynical about feminism?
it's too distracted, it wants to spread its influence into
every human endeavour, positively speaking
it's what woman always boast about:
feminism is multitasking... it has to be relevant in
every realm of thinking... first of all it should focus
on one, and stop this quasi-plagiarism it's doing
at the moment in every aspect of cognition -
i say, the founding mother, the matriarch of
******* is feminism - honey... can't **** all the time,
gotta forage and hunt and build houses too!

Despite Blue-Nile
-lower-riparian countries' clamor
For possible dearth
Of water
So that GERD, condemned,
A reversal suffer
They are  now inundated
By the river.

Had GERD not been
Born to life
Imagine how their
Plight could be rife!

See how the stance of
So called a great leader
With a brain of a bird
Proved absurd.

GERD has started
To hold water
Though Egypt's
Phony politicians
Were making
Many a chatter
That doesn't
Hold water.

At long last Ethiopia
Is set free,
Shaking of spokes,
Its developmental take off
To decree.

To conflict-exporting
Egypt's divisive wedge
And conspiracy
Ethiopians no more
Give ear
Cherishing a prosperity
Journey dear.

In tackling
A mammoth project
Ethiopia on its feet
That stood
Demonstrated
With no need to aid
From the
Double-standard exercising
IMF & World Bank --
All along
Its ambitious way
Against that stood
To Egypt
Showing  favoritism
And brotherhood--
When closing ranks for
A just cause  stand tall
The shunned could.

In the fight for
Freedom Ethiopia  was
A beacon light to Africa
Whose rays
Did stretch to Jamaica.

Repeats itself history
GERD is reminiscent of,
Adwa's victory.

Forefathers shedding blood
In a spectacular
Bravery and unity
Heralded
"A violated-not sovereignty
And self confidence"
For posterity!
What is more
An unpolluted culture
And intact identity!

Thus, maintaining integrity
And hard-preserved identity
Getting poverty and lack
Behind our back,
For the coming generation
We have to pave the track
With Mega projects  Like
--GERD--
So that on a bright tomorrow
Our children embark!

Before UN
Or the global limelight
Flagrant, let us talk
"GERD we threaten to attack,
If for technical reasons
It suffers a crack
Will wipe out  
Down stream dwellers
With the water it
Carries on its back."

Upstream dwellers
Our brothers,
With all sorts of trouble
That we try to envelop
And around whose neck
We spare no effort
To put a rope
Could develop
Coerced for hydropower
To *****.

We have to double
Our dabble
At the eleventh hour
To create
A trouble.

cooled. So, we fell like a souffle'
left on the counter for a day. We just
collapsed as we relaxed into this. And slurs

replaced a kiss. As this grew stale
we exhaled just like a cough. I choked
on his words. It gave me reflux like

my Gerd. I guess you can say
some men are just bad indigestion. So,
many I've passed -

like gas, Couldn't wait for
them to leave, To clear the air
so I can breathe!

high in pectin
boosts flavor of cereal
bunchberries for GERD